Although I've said it before, this may be my last Patterson book. I think the only reason that I bothered to read this one was that I got the full book for free for my Kindle when the book was first posted on Amazon in December.

The book is plot driven rather than character driven which generally makes for flat characters which was not helped by the fact that it's a lousy plot. By the end of the book, I really felt I had come to think of Bennett as "flat Stanley" for the interest that he generated --- and unfortunately, not just in that character! I appreciated the difference between the first person/third person approach --- unfortunately, the character development was so poor the approach didn't salvage the book.

I knew that the Michael Bennett character is part of a Patterson series. However, except for the Women's Murder Club series, it has seldom seemed necessary in any of Patterson's books to have read the previous books or to know the background of the character(s). I did have a passing thought that it might be interesting to know how Bennett's children came to the family, but then the kids just seem to be more of the background than any important part of the story . . . whose children are that well behaved and cheerful all of the time, especially with what is going on around them?!?!?

I was quite disappointed in the ending (no spoiler here!). . . almost like the authors looked over their work, saw that they had a hundred and some chapters written and "it must be about time to wrap up so we better move along on with this list" (and certainly they were working with a list and not a "story line"!).